As Jayne and Rajiv holiday in Krabi, Jayne can't stop her mind straying to thoughts of the future: a successful business, perhaps even a honeymoon. Who would have thought she could be so content?

But then their tour guide's body is found floating in the shallows and no one can explain the marks around her neck. Jayne and Rajiv are pulled into a case that the police have already decided isn't one: a case that will pull at the seams of their fledgling relationships and lead Jayne into grave danger.

As Jayne and Rajiv holiday in Krabi, Jayne can't stop her mind straying to thoughts of the future: a successful business, perhaps even a honeymoon. Who would have thought she could be so content?

But then their tour guide's body is found floating in the shallows and no one can explain the marks around her neck. Jayne and Rajiv are pulled into a case that the police have already decided isn't one: a case that will pull at the seams of their fledgling relationships and lead Jayne into grave danger.

Who said crime doesn't pay? Australian expat Jayne Keeney lives in Thailand and works in Bangkok. When she heads north to Chiang Mai to visit her good friend Didier, she soon discovers that the local police have an especially cosy relationship with money and illegal acts. When Jayne learns of this, she realises she is in danger.

Blurb from the book

Jayne has been hired to investigate the alleged suicide of a young Australian woman in a seedy Thai coastal town. But Maryanne Delbeck's death is not the only mystery awaiting Jayne among Pattaya's neon signs and go-go bars. While working undercover at the orphanage where Maryanne volunteered, Jayne discovers something far more sinister.

Jayne has been hired to investigate the alleged suicide of a young Australian woman in a seedy Thai coastal town. But Maryanne Delbeck's death is not the only mystery awaiting Jayne among Pattaya's neon signs and go-go bars. While working undercover at the orphanage where Maryanne volunteered, Jayne discovers something far more sinister.

Now her life is in danger, her case is still unsolved and she barely has time for dinner with her handsome new love interest, Rajiv. With love and death both circling, Jayne now has two cases to crack - and very little time to do it.

Book Review:

Good crime fiction, for me anyway, frequently goes hand in hand with a spotlight on social issues. If it incorporates a good, strong sense of place and great characters that you can really feel something about, then even better.

THE HALF-CHILD is Melbourne author Angela Savage's second Jayne Keeney book. This book is set in Thailand, but the focus this time is on the beachside resort of Pattaya, a strange combination of tourist resort, family friendly locations, sleazy bars and strip-joints. Jayne finds herself in Pattaya as she is hired to investigate the case of a young Australian woman who died there, falling from the roof of one of the tourist hotels. Jayne's investigation involves undercover work, hiding the fact that she can speak fluent Thai, working at the most menial of volunteering tasks in an orphanage, coming to grips in a hurry with the way that this orphanage balances the care of local children, often with their single mothers working nearby in the tourist bars and strip-joints, with the requirements of abandoned or orphaned children intended for overseas adoption.

The impetus behind this story is overseas adoptions when unscrupulous people get involved, people who effectively are trafficking babies to unsuspecting foreign couples, desperate to adopt. Savage has not given herself a particularly easy subject to tackle. The book has to negotiate a minefield, illustrating the experience for everyone involved, careful to show the impact on all sides, whilst still maintaining an investigative imperative. This is not a book that lectures about the pitfalls, and there's a part of the resolution of this complex emotional situation that's possibly going to startle some readers, sadden and confront.

The other thing about these books is that Jayne, herself, isn't a straight-forward character. She's a little bit out there, unpredictable, upfront and frequently prickly, she's no fool, even though she can get a little, let's call it "over enthusiastic". And perhaps that's the only thing that might annoy some readers - what I'm calling "over enthusiastic" some may want to say teeters on the edge of crazy - but then I can see Jayne's very much a "poke the bear / none of this let sleeping bears lie nonsense" sort of a girl. There are therefore times when you admire her, and times you want to slap her. Times you think she's a raging idiot, and then she'll be quite cunning. There's even a little romantic tension - although Jayne seems to be alternatively intrigued, sometimes underwhelmed or just flat out indifferent.

It's always interesting, with the second book in a series, to see what changes the author has undertaken in their writing, to look at the quality of the plot, and how the central character is progressing. THE HALF-CHILD is more assured than the first book, and as strange as it seems given the subject matter, a little more relaxed. There's great humour, particularly in the personality of Jayne herself, who doesn't take herself too seriously, and in that of her potential new partner, Rajiv, who provides some much needed patience and sanity in the face of Jayne's more exuberant behaviour.

The great thing about THE HALF-CHILD is that reading this book, you can see there's a lot more to be done with Jane.

Who said crime doesn't pay? Australian expat Jayne Keeney lives in Thailand and works in Bangkok. When she heads north to Chiang Mai to visit her good friend Didier, she soon discovers that the local police have an especially cosy relationship with money and illegal acts. When Jayne learns of this, she realises she is in danger.

Book Review:

Angela Savage won the Victorian Premiers Literary Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript by Emerging Author in 2004 for this book, then called Thai Died.

Jayne Keeney is an expat Australian woman who, in order to avoid a predictable life, left Australia and started teaching English in Thailand. Whilst helping out a student by doing some surveillance on a cheating partner she discovers she has quite a flair for detecting, and that there is a demand for this type of service. She gives up teaching and sticks to working as a private detective in Bangkok doing a good trade in following suspected partners. After a particularly violent turn of events during one such job she seeks some solace in the company of her dearest friend Didier de Montpasse in Chiang Mai. Didier and Jayne share a passion for crime fiction, even though they don't exactly see eye to eye over genre (Didier's a cozy fan, Jayne is strictly hard boiled).

As soon as Jayne arrives there is some apparent tension between Didier and his Thai lover Nau. After a night out with Didier at a gay bar in an out of way part of the city, the next morning Jayne finds the papers leading with stories about a brutal murder in the bar that she was drinking in earlier. Things rapidly take a much bigger turn for the worse and Jayne finds herself having to investigate what really happened in that bar.

This book covers a considerable amount of ground in and around the sex trade in Thailand - local, sex tourism and paedophilia. There are some big players making a lot of money from this trade and there are lots of connections to the police investigating the bar deaths.

Savage has spent some considerable time working in and around Bangkok on Australian Red Cross HIV/AIDS programs and she obviously has an understanding of Thai customs and of the people. The story is peppered with Thai words and phrases and Jayne speaks fluent Thai. The book has a very clear sense of place and the Thai characters and location are clearly defined and interesting.

The compelling thing about this book is that it's a crime fiction novel which is touching on a number of very serious social issues: child sexual exploitation, AIDS/HIV, sex tourism and official corruption, but the book tells the message, reveals the consequences, and avoids lecturing. This is a first novel and there are some problems with some of the motivations and behaviour of some of the characters, but these are minor in the overall use of a really interesting and unusual background. BEHIND THE NIGHT BAZAAR also introduces a central character with an eye to future books.

Angela Savage won the Victorian Premiers Literary Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript by Emerging Author in 2004 for this book, then called Thai Died.

Jayne Keeney is an expat Australian woman who, in order to avoid a predictable life, left Australia and started teaching English in Thailand. Whilst helping out a student by doing some surveillance on a cheating partner she discovers she has quite a flair for detecting, and that there is a demand for this type of service. She gives up teaching and sticks to working as a private detective in Bangkok doing a good trade in following suspected partners. After a particularly violent turn of events during one such job she seeks some solace in the company of her dearest friend Didier de Montpasse in Chiang Mai. Didier and Jayne share a passion for crime fiction, even though they don't exactly see eye to eye over genre (Didier's a cozy fan, Jayne is strictly hard boiled).

As soon as Jayne arrives there is some apparent tension between Didier and his Thai lover Nau. After a night out with Didier at a gay bar in an out of way part of the city, the next morning Jayne finds the papers leading with stories about a brutal murder in the bar that she was drinking in earlier. Things rapidly take a much bigger turn for the worse and Jayne finds herself having to investigate what really happened in that bar.

This book covers a considerable amount of ground in and around the sex trade in Thailand - local, sex tourism and paedophilia. There are some big players making a lot of money from this trade and there are lots of connections to the police investigating the bar deaths.

Savage has spent some considerable time working in and around Bangkok on Australian Red Cross HIV/AIDS programs and she obviously has an understanding of Thai customs and of the people. The story is peppered with Thai words and phrases and Jayne speaks fluent Thai. The book has a very clear sense of place and the Thai characters and location are clearly defined and interesting.

The compelling thing about this book is that it's a crime fiction novel which is touching on a number of very serious social issues: child sexual exploitation, AIDS/HIV, sex tourism and official corruption, but the book tells the message, reveals the consequences, and avoids lecturing. This is a first novel and there are some